Leadership Lessons From The Marines, With Thad David

Nexstar trainer Thad David talks to Jack about lessons in leadership learned from the Marines and serving directly after 9/11. The two discuss the importance of cooperation and support. You have to know who's got your back whether you're part of a business or part of a recon team in battle.

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Speaker 1 0:09

Hi this Jack Tester and welcome to another episode of Leadership Lounge. I am in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It's April 2nd, which happens to be the first anniversary of fad. David, how are you doing that? I'm doing great, Jack. Thanks. How are you? Good. Good. This is your first work anniversary here at Nexstar specifically. It is. So congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I saw your face today and I said you've got a story to tell. You've got something interesting to share because you are now a full time trainer for Nexstar . You've been doing that for a year and you've got an interesting journey to get to where you're sitting across from me right now. And I think it's a, I think it'd be interesting for our listeners to kind of hear that story too. So thanks for doing this. That, yeah, I'm happy to be here, Jack . Good. So let's do this. Let's talk just very briefly, I don't want to get into a long thing, but uh , where'd you grow up? Where were you when you graduated high school? So I actually was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Okay. My parents got a divorce, didn't know my real father growing up, but my mom moved to South Mississippi. Okay. And I graduated from high school and stuff . I don't have a Mississippi accent in New Orleans accent. I don't. And I actually grew up in a household where if I ever did anything that wasn't proper speaking proper, my mom would swiftly poke me with a fork or whatever sharp object was closest. [inaudible] my mom beat me with a [inaudible] poked you with a metal fork. All Right , nice. Thanks man . All right . So that , that explains that she didn't want you to have in a all y'all and all that stuff. All y'all. Every now and again it'll slip out. But yeah, so that's , that's a little bit about where I grew up. I didn't know that. So , so anyway, so you grew up in south Mississippi, New Orleans, kind of that, that air the country. And you actually graduate high school? I did. So right away, of course you said the only path is college. Is that right? Absolutely . Tell Americans you threatened to , now you're a very accomplished executive here next door. Of course he had to go to college to do that, right? Absolutely not. You didn't ? No. I joined the during the middle of , I knew the college was not for me. I didn't know what, why was that? Just curious. Why did you know it wasn't for you? Or is it just something else? I was not a very good student. I don't like to say I was bad in school. I just know I didn't, I wasn't very active and in the learning process and what they were doing. Okay. I don't think I did my part either, but I definitely didn't do well and I thought to myself, why extend the torture? Why exactly? Well, why go do another four years of it? And yeah , I didn't really want to sit at home. I didn't know what other options I had. I mean, I grew up in a very poor neighborhood. Okay . Just didn't know what else was there. And the military was, was a way for me to, at least to kind of reset and see what else is out there and learn about kind of a common story to this point, isn't it? You know for somebody that to join the military and I left high school, finished that wasn't intrigued with ongoing education for whatever the reason. Good, bad or indifferent in join military. What service did you join in the marines. Oh fantastic. What years was this? If I can ask? Yeah, I was in from Oh one to oh five. Okay. Oh one interesting times, weren't they? There was, did you join before? After nine 11? It was right before. And so I went to boot camp about , uh , three weeks after nine 11 happened. Oh Wow. My mom really tried hard to convince me not to go in cause we knew what was happening yet when that, that occurred. Yeah , I remember that very well. And so as the young man for sure, or middle aged man at that time. So you joined the military and joined the marines. What did you, what did you want to do as a marine? So my cousin of mine was a recon marine and I mean for further, we have a guy like me that has flat feet and never joined the service. I thought that flat feet, but I did drop the surface at the time. There's, there's a couple of levels to it now. So it's changed this as you know, 17 years ago, 18 years ago. And at the time it was very much considered like navy seals, recon marines were kind of an upper end kind of a hardcore marines if there's , that's like a double negative, right? Yeah, exactly right. There's a a video out about, and this is, you know, the marine thing, marine slogan is the few and the proud. Yup . And it just says the fewer in the prouder, that's a recon marine. So, so you had a relative that was a recon marine? Yup . And you said me too. That was what I wanted to do. And so you cannot , at the time you couldn't sign up for it. All you can do is sign up to be in the infantry. And then I knew what an infantry school, you got to go try out. So I went and there was a couple hundred or a hundred of us. I tried out and I went and see what I could do. Will you, did you become a reclaimed idea? There were , they picked two of us, but that was just a move to the prerecord school. Okay. We got to, there was quite a few levels to it, but they , they picked two of us mean I'm still good friends with the guy. Mike Bull . I'm just curious what , why you have the two out of the hundred, what , what did you do that was more exemplary or stood out? I'm just curious. Wait , it was so very big in the water, so we swam a lot and I swam all through high school, which I think gave me a leg up on everybody else. Okay . Because I definitely shown, I showed that I , I could really step ahead in the water with boots on or whatever they had to do and all that stuff. Jumping out of an airplane into water or whatever. Yep . He's terrified. He's thinking about, okay, so you are in , what else you'd good at water, something else. That was really the main thing. I mean they , they tested us a lot in the water and I think, you know, when everybody, I really stood out in that area and everybody does really well in certain areas and I could keep up, hold my own and everything else and , and that when I really, and did you know, that was a big part of becoming Raycom Reno just happened to be, you know, I just happen to be a swimmer and I was good at it. I knew that it was, I wasn't what caused me to be a swimmer, but it definitely didn't hurt. Okay . Going in, you know, you had kind of a leg up so I figured it was , it wasn't going to hurt me. Yeah . And an extra flipper there. Yeah . What kind of a podcast? Young Jack . This is good. That's good. So, so he became a recon marine? Yup . And how, how far in the year service period was that? It was right away. So, okay. I went through boot camp . I went to Paris island, went to infantry school. Yup . Went through a , which was about three months pre-req con , which was, I think I was up there for about two months. [inaudible] went to recon school, which was three months. So I had that many months in before I actually got into a unit. Got It. And whenever the first recon in California. Oh fantastic. So what does a recon marine do then? A recon marine. We actually go out ahead. So one of the, the main things about re reconnaissance is we go push up ahead and um , do recon . So we'll surveil like do that . That's a great way day . Um, so , uh, one of the first missions that we did in Iraq was they wanted to know is the satellite imagery that's being, that we see is it still accurate? So we want to see if this bridge is still here, can we send a battalion in this direction? So instead of sending everybody there, they send the recon team at, you know, of ahead of everybody else just to check it out and see what's there. Okay. Wow. So you part Desert Storm and not Desert Storm. What's the name of it? What is the name of that? I think that was the official version of Stan Operation Iraqi Freedom. Right. I'm , I'm just getting few of the Iraq war. Which one was the one that happened early nineties and that's Desert Storm. Yeah, that's the one. I'm sorry, I got all confused with my , my wars has been so many. Yeah , quite a few. Yeah. So anyway, I'm sorry. I did. So you were, you were , you went ahead. Yep . And you observe things [inaudible] . Right. And how, how long did you do that and that that was, I mean, as far as the definition of reconnaissance, it's whenever it's needed. At that time it was, everybody moved up so fast through the Iraq war. I mean, there was, it was like a re a foot race to get to Baghdad. Right. So current reconning for law. Yeah . It was, there was a lot of like, punch ahead and then move over here and then you find your side seconds ahead . Right, exactly. Yeah. It was, it was an interesting, scary to me and dangerous. It wasn't, it , it was definitely, we found ourselves in some, some interesting situations. Yeah. Wow, that's a little, thank you for doing that. I'm sure it was a harrowing thing and you'd have some stories and I don't know if now's the time to talk about those, but, but we'll see. Well , I'm an open book. [inaudible] tell me one, tell me route one recon story that stands out from your time that, whether it was an interesting one, a hairy one, or something that was of high value to you.

Speaker 2 8:44

Hmm .

Speaker 1 8:46

If you can. Yeah. No, I mean one that , one that really stands out to me is, and I don't think we knew it at the time, but we had, we went behind this city, so the whole battalion, everybody's waiting online . There's this huge line of machine guns literally on the ground. Hundreds of men in the prone with machine guns aimed at the city. We ran around the backside to kind of see what was their side of the city, the back side of the city. Just check out the back end. We were going to make sure nobody was going out the, yeah, escaping. And we ended up getting caught an ambush and we drove through and this huge firefight took place. I knew what the vehicles look like, Swiss cheese. It was a midyear vehicles or all of our vehicles. It was, it was crazy. It was amazing that everybody made it out alive. But the really crazy part was we drove back out the front and we didn't know if we were having trouble getting in touch with everybody, the machine gun line. And so we don't get our pointed at, you know, they were pointed at us, so we just didn't want to get shot as we were advancing as fast as we could towards them . [inaudible] and so that was, that was one of the main ones where we all, when that was over, why didn't you stay back behind and wait for him to get in there? And was, we were in the middle of an ambush, so she had to keep driving. Yes . So we're driving through the ambush. No, we're not. Oh, you don't want to stop. You don't want to stop in the ambush, so you just drive through it. So there's , yeah, no, it's , yeah, we drove through the ambush because we had no choice but to got it. And then we quickly found ourselves facing this big line of machine guns that were just super athlete . That sounds harrowing. Yep . Well that was, we were pretty thankful that day. I bet you were . Yeah, I bet you were dry fast, right? That drive drive drive very fast asked . Okay. Well there's another thing you did in the marines that you've carried forward. You were some kind of a specialized shooter, weren't you? Or what did you, what were you that , so I was actually, I went through a scout sniper school in the Marine Corps . Okay. Tell us again, for a layman like me, what does that mean to be a sniper? What does scout sniper, what is, what's, what's the role? I mean, I , I get it. You shoot guns, right? Yeah . And so I mean it's , it's a very specific craft and that I think the big, the what everybody sees, what'd you see on TV is the shooting [inaudible] and there's, there's much more to it than just that. That's a very small piece. One of the bigger ones is actually getting into position cause you, you go off on your own , uh , stalking is a big one where that's, that's where you see 'em in the Ghillie suits and they're crawling through the grass and you did that. Yep . That was it. You had to show that you could do that. No . Okay. Yeah . I'm just getting cause you're , so you have to be able to get into position and then also have the mental capacity to know what you're doing and where you're going. Cause it's you, it's just you out there. So it was, it was a pretty amazing course to go through. Yeah . I think that's why I've uh , stayed so strong today from what I learned in that course. So we've , they ran us through all kinds of scenarios of, you know, shoot or don't shoot scenarios cause everything you do is on the fly was right. There was a lot of, a lot of good training there that I think really I was able to take forward all the way through everything we did. And it was a good school. Yeah . So you've even had a , your, your, your sign off line in your emails was shoot straight. Yup . Right. So in that, and that obviously came from this training and this experience she had. Yup . Tell me about that. Well, and so it with scout snipers as ss shoot straight also SSL , I didn't know that. So it's a common , uh, I would say not a super common, but it's not an uncommon thing to see in the scout sniper world is that was how you'd save goodbye to each other, shoot straight and that kind of stuff. Not , I mean , there's respectfully , I'd probably go on a mission shoot straight. No , it's not, not anything like that that I've heard. Okay. But it's definitely something you'll, you'll see. And it was something that, that I remember telling myself on the line. I mean, learning how to, you know, known in shooting when you, when you get out there and you have to learn how to shoot. Yeah . It was one of the first things that they , they teach you and there's so many little tiny things that go into shooting about accuracy. Yeah . With accuracy and every little thing that affects it. And that's just kinda how I reminded myself. I use that motto of shoot straight to remind myself every time I'm there to shoot straight. Well, when I , what I took from this, just what you just said is that, that, you know, I'm not a , I'm a hunter, I'm not a shooter. You know, I'm very practical, you know, hold my breath, pull the trigger. Right. Um, but what you're saying, there's a lot of little things that you gotta do, right, that you can't forget to make sure you make an accurate shot. Yup . Right? And you know, the metaphors there are endless in our business, right? And what you do, what you train for service system and you think, well, I'll just show up. Right? You didn't train guy in and knock on the door and I walk in and go fix the problem and walk out. It's real simple, but there's a hundred little things that we train that gotta be done, right. So I can kind of get the , the metaphor there , right. It's not life or death like your job was, but it's still, it's a little, it's those, those, in your case, it was the details that might make or break a successful mission or even saved your life, which really magnify their importance, but in the real world, that's still important. Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. And too , to the point of in the service world. Yeah, there was that, that , um, I remember what show it was on. They had that team of plumbers that went into that woman's house for 10 years. She'd been sick and everybody did you see that one now? She kept, everybody was , all these doctors are prescribing her medicine because they think she's getting sick. And this group of very skilled plumbers went in realize that she had a CEO lead coming off for what a year. They fixed it up, everything's gone. She's healthy again after 10 years of doctors not knowing what's wrong. Really. Yeah. No, it's, and so I fully believe that there's, you know , while that's not every single call, yeah, they're people's lives are in the line with what, you know, the service professionals that we have the opportunity to train. It's not what I , what I hear coming through this is just kind of the , the , the appreciation for detail, the appreciation for process, the appreciation for discipline that you learned in the military really served you well, hasn't it? It has. That's awesome man. Well thank you for your service. No, for sure. I was, I was really happy to be able to go do my part. Yeah. Well you certainly sound like you did so well done man. Well done. So you were in the service for five years. Four years. Four years from level , from one to four . One Oh five yeah . Right. And of course then you left the service instead. Of course, now's the time to use the GI bill right back to , cause I have to take a get , I'm saying this facetiously now, now's the time to go back to college. Yeah. Is that what she said? That is exactly what I said. Did you, cause that's what I, that's what needed to be done. Why don't you feel that way at that point ? You know, that's what, that's what society teaches us. You know , you have to go to college. Did you? I ended up going and it was not a successful run. I did okay. But, but I did get , exactly shoot straight. Kind of drove through that ambush. [inaudible] exactly right . I can phone up the life or death situations. Not Real print . Not Real Nice, but still laughing. That's what's important. It's , yeah. So no , he went to college. How long did you go to college? Um, yeah , I was doing the math on that and it was a few years. You were a terrible student, right? Count the months . Good. You know, it's more of, I think they say that people that went as long as me, they call them doctors. So what long time they went for, a few of them went for awhile . Okay. So I wouldn't quite eight but I think I was there for everybody to six whole , really? Five and a half or six. Okay. So from Oh five to 11 after that. Right. Is that about the time you were the yeah. Yes . So six, six and a half. So you didn't graduate, did not graduate. What'd you decide to do before you imagine your full time for awhile and just part time. I was full time switched over to part time for some of it. I had to, I started in California and actually I moved back after Hurricane Katrina and moved back going back home islands , New Orleans hitting in August. So I wanted to, I was already enrolled in California. Okay. Moved back home to help out and okay. That's my , my disclaimers . One of those little hiccups. But what's that? What's the hiccup? Move . We'll just say that I wouldn't move back and help some , help the family out, but um , it was definitely me not, it wasn't exactly a vision of mercy you're talking about. I'm like, this is a convenient excuse to get the heck out of college. You got what I'm hearing? Yup. Okay. So, and I picked it back up. I went to uno, the University of New Orleans for a couple of years . Okay. Wasn't that successful with that and, okay. Um, it was really, really interesting. I was waiting tables. Uh , what didn't you do some mission or mercenary work? I did. Was that during that six years? Uh, it was actually afterwards. So it was, it was actually right after I met Keith. I went, so let's live . So I'm sorry to interrupt cause I thought you'd jump past it cause I thought that was fascinating. So you're waiting tables, started waiting tables, going to school. You know, I was working at a nice steakhouse. I thought the money was great. Life is good. Waiter. Yeah. Being a waiter. It was good tips. Good tips. It was a , yeah , it was a pretty nice steak house. Um , had to be really expensive and indulgent if Keith went there. So that's good. Yeah, I'll never, he'd walked in by himself when he came. He got a steak in a bourbon. So no , uh , no surprise. Okay. Still the same. Right, right. Um, so I met Keith and we got to talking about just the military. He's got two buddies that actually were okay. Well yeah . And he mentioned troops to traits. Um, the interesting thing, I don't think a lot of people realize, but a week before about a week and a half before I met Keith , um, my dog had died, went to my mom's house on a Saturday to bury my dog. And that Tuesday after that my mom just didn't wake up and she passed away, which sparked the mercenary work cause it was, I was just not in a good place. In a good a week and a half after you met Keith? Yup . Uh, before I met Keith, so I was at, okay . I just kind of wanted to go forget about it, but my mom passed away. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. That's all right. Yeah. But that was kind of what , sorry . Transitional period few at then wasn't it extremely, his mother passed away, you know, yet you're not minimizing what your dog passed away. Yeah. And so I bring up the [inaudible] as it was. New Orleans is kind of gone. Yup . In some level. Yeah it was. And I bring up the dog cause I get , that's what got me to see my mom cause she lived about an hour away from me. I wouldn't have seen her. And so I got to see my mom on a Saturday night right before. So I was just grateful for though . Yeah. Um, and then met Keith and he said he mentioned the trades and boops of trades, which was this emerging program that the foundation had put together to help transitioning veterans find work in the trade . So Keith is passionate, you know, a founder, that idea here at Nexstar and uh , sold you a little bit or talk to you about that. Just just having just a conversation. Yep . Right. Yeah, you didn't got me in touch. We had a great conversation. Yeah . And I ended up , um, you know, given my background in the military, I used to get phone calls all the time for doing various things and various things , uh , just doing contracting work overseas. So like the mercenary work in Africa. Okay. So tell us what you did. So I will , let's just frame this. You talked to Keith about the trades your mother had just passed away transitional period, you know, you weren't actually working within your major, didn't even have a major at this point. Yeah. Right. You're making decent money. Yup . Right. And I want to , I was close , I'm about 15 hours away from a biology degree. So good to know. Yep. For a swimmer. Yeah . Right. All right. Right on. So anyway , so anyway, then you left New Orleans and you'd would tell the people listening what you did. So my job was to, I would fly into the west coast of Africa, wherever the ship was gonna pick us up. We would go meet a team , um , whoever was going to be there with us, we'd fly over, meet them, wait at the harbor. The ship would come and pick us up and then we'd guide these ships through the pirate waters and they just make sure that none of the ships got ambushed with you. This is like the pirates that they come on, those little speed boats that Yep . Run up to these tankers. Right. You see on TV or they used to hear about, Yup . That's exactly right. So you'd man these guns on this ship in case there was one ever attacked by a pirate. So it was the way that I, the reason that security works so well and the way that I always explain it to people's , if you go into a parking lot with all these cars and you can go rob any of them except for the one that has three people with guns in it, which one would you rob as anyone but that one. And so it was very much a show of force and we'd go out there and show our guns. I mean we would see them, you know, frequently for once they shot that saw the day. I mean the pirates , the pirates. Yeah. We know their parents . So your , they ended up black flagging. Hey don't tell that to my nieces cause they really hate when I was over there. They , they loved thinking that that's what it was. Okay. Me and Jack Sparrow just do , when I think about, when I look at you, yeah. So a year , you know, imagine being 80 to 100 miles off the coast. Yeah . And there's all these fishermen, a surprisingly large amount and these little wooden boats everywhere. Yeah . There's, there's quite a few. Okay. And you wonder how that little boat even makes it 80 to 100 miles off the coast. Uh Huh. And so you , you can identify that's a fishermen , that's a fisherman . There might be one or two people on the boat and then you go buy one boat that has 30 people in it, 20 people in this boat that it's, they're not fishing and they're kind of eyeballing. So they would never pull up their weapons because they know that, but it was pretty, pretty obvious who they were. Okay. And you wanted to make sure that you were brandishing weapons and it was very evident, you know? Wow. Very, very interesting . How long did you do that was a couple months and I good times. Yeah . Yeah, it was , it was good times I looking . Yeah , I, you know, it was, it was good. I mean, we , we worked eight hour , we did at our shifts on the, in the bridge and all . He didn't sat there and looked at the ocean. Right? Yup . Literally [inaudible] guns were shined. Yup . And that was, knows to do that in a firemen waiting for a call. That's what it was. Sounds like hell. It was so, and I knew that my, what I wanted in my future was having a family and being able to take care of that family and being gone for two, three, four months at a time was not right. Not a good way. Especially in that capacity. Yeah. So, yeah . I don't , I don't know. It doesn't sound glamorous at all to me to be protecting a cargo ship and the Indian Ocean. Yeah. Yeah. So you got back into port . What happened after the last one? You did several of these little tricks . I did a few. Okay. Um, and just, I realized it wasn't for me good though. I bet didn't it? The pay was good when they paid, so I actually got out . So the , there's still a a balance due , but they haven't, who's supposed to pay the shipping company? No. So the , the company that I worked for, they actually used it. I think he used it as a tool to make sure other people, you went back out so he would miraculously find money if you signed up to go on another one and be like, oh yeah, I got some money for you here. But the moment that you didn't, that sounds, that's what snipers, yeah. Well, yeah, they did. They did. They did. They did. Okay. I'd be terrified to you, so, wow . Wow. All right. So he's still, he's still got a paycheck. Yeah, we'll see you . This has been, yeah, I'm not a , I'm not holding my breath for that one. No , I think, I think when you got ar that's eight years old, you got a problem that collections, it's like, you know, the past 90 days as a warning sign. It's it. That's what you know . So anyways , so you , you did a bunch of these trips and you'd get back in here and you're not chatting on cell phone when you're out there. You , nope. Yeah, there was, there was service when you touched when you hit land, but when you're off the coast there was, there was enough he could get to the, you get to a port. What'd you do? You watch them unload and cause you had to give security while they were unloading to me . She didn't want to go get robbed while you were in the port. I'd be taking the expert what to do after they were unloaded , we would just take off to the next one and nobody wanted to hang out in the harbors and stuff. It definitely wasn't, wasn't they would and the , the people on the boats, they would actually go out into town and do whatever they did. But we s I stayed on, I never got up the, you know, I would go walk around the city just to check it out. But yeah , never do it out . Yeah, it was , yeah , I looked a little different. I didn't want an Irish guy walking through. Yeah. Right. So, so, so tell us how you decided to get away from this, this, this life now, this, this interim life. Yeah. I just w I wanted something more, I wanted something different, something that didn't require me to put my life on the line and , okay. So what'd you find?

Speaker 3 25:50

Um ,

Speaker 1 25:51

so I , I actually called Keith backup and you both Keith material. Yep . Keith material backup. Um, and I don't want to leave out this other piece, but I actually looked at a different , um, I used to brew a lot of beer back in the day and so I talked to them about possibly working at a brewery. Um , talked to who? Keith. Keith? Yeah. Just, Oh , okay . I actually, he, he tells the story much better, but I talked to him about that. Ended up getting into the trays . I went to my first, so I got signed up for my first services to mountain Denver and that two troops are shades through troops of trades . Um, I loaded everything I had. If I didn't, if it wouldn't fit in a six by 12 u haul, it wasn't coming with me. Okay. And I remember I drove my Exterra cross country to Colorado, parked at the Hyatt and downtown Denver. Everything I owned at this service system was in the hall in the parking lot. And I didn't have a place to stay. I didn't know where I was going. I didn't have a job, I didn't have a place. I just kind of on complete blind faith of that white troops. The trades would find you a home. Yeah . At least give me the opportunity. Yeah. You know, so to be able to do that, right. Yeah . Come do this. And then while I was out here that Keith was gonna set up some, some interviews and get me, introduced me some people. Okay. So , so you decided to take a two shot? I did. Who'd you meet? I ended up meeting , uh , Mike and Jeff Allen. All great people. They are top notch. Yeah. You can't say. And Alan Services in in Fort Collins, Colorado. Yep . Fantastic. And they decided to hire you? They did. Would they have you do, you didn't have any trade background per se. You're, no . You're a straight shooter. Right? Right. As long as there wasn't one pirates , we knew that as long as there's no schoolwork, I was, I'm ready to go. So , um, so I eventually, I wanted to get into sales because I thought that that was where I wanted to be in Jeff being the visionary that he is. I mean, really a brilliant idea. He wanted somebody to come in and actually train the service system to be okay to ride along. And he asked me, they were really great. They recognized what I wanted to do and they wanted to hire me. They offered me a position as a right along coach. They said, we want you to do this for six months. If you don't like it, we'll , we'll put you in a sales role and get you going, but this way you will learn some about the trades too. Right. And that's what they got me started doing first I started in ride alongs, learning about the trades and because I had been through a service system, I really immersed myself in that. Yeah. And help their team out with it. Very nice. Very nice. We had a nice career at Allen . It was, yeah . I mean , here's where you there, it was almost five years. Wow. I didn't realize it was that long. Moving fast man . It was from 12 to seven, 10

Speaker 2 28:35

no,

Speaker 1 28:36

13 to 18, something like that. Yeah. So you would, and you'd ride along, coach, have you started to do some management theory? Learned the business. Yup . Right. Helped out. Did that moved Daniel relocated to Fort Collins. Yeah . So I moved to Fort Collins, got set up there and was the right along. Coach did that for a couple years. Um, they started expanding, they opened up, split their departments and needed to service managers [inaudible] and they put me in to the HVHC role. Yep . And to be the service manager, which was right . Um , know I was just grateful for that as well. Well we had seen, you know, obviously you knew Keith and, and uh, we had talked to the good folks at Allen about you being a member trainer for us. You started to do some, some training on behalf of next door out on the greater world. Yep . Is that right? Service system training. Cause you're doing that. That's what your life was, your , your career, I should say. Yeah. At that point. Right. And then , uh , things worked out that , uh , you were able to come on full time with next arm . We're very grateful for the good folks at, you know, an Allen to , to help us work that out. And that was an awesome opportunity for you. Yeah, that was, that was an emotional day for me. Leaving Allen . Yeah, it was great people. He was on the board for Awhile telling Jeff and he just, yeah , great guy. That was a great business to work. It was a phenomenal, I have nothing but love and respect for Mike and Jeff Allen for sure. They were amazing and supporting me and moving out to Colorado. They took me out just still to this day, nothing. They support me still and it's, yeah , it's , it's , it's pretty amazing. Well, that's fantastic. Let's talk about your journey since you've been here net next door. Um, tell me about what you, you know, your , your job, right. I want you to describe to people what you do if they don't know who you are, what your job is, trainer with Nexstar . Okay. So why? Uh , the main class that I facilitate is service system. Okay. Um, I do a few other ones. So I do the public events, some of the public events , uh , and several private events where I go out to, to companies and we facilitate a three day service system. Yeah . You also teach, install to and do the install. What else do teach the service management? Uh , HPAC specific. The electrical sales. Okay. So a few of them. Well , you've carved, you started a nice career here, so thank you for that man. You're on the road all the time. Well , you know , I , I feel really just grateful to be here and just to have this opportunity. It's , it's, it's amazing. We have the, I love being a Nexstar. I love Nexstars membership. It's pretty amazing. Let's talk about, about going to, I'm going to shift from your perspective and your journey and it's , it's a fascinating one, by the way. You've had a , a completely different set of experiences that I've had and most people have had been in the military and what you've done there and you know, transitioning out and doing some contract work overseas. And I mean really a fascinating journey. But , um, tell us what you have think has been from that journey. If you think about what you're doing today, what's been the biggest lessons you've pulled forward? What have you pulled forward from the military or even from your prior to that, that, that you really look at and say, wow, this is really serving me well right now as a trainer, as a professional, et cetera. And just to be clear, pulling from the military, be sure or just anything, I'm just, let's, let's keep the military. Okay . Just keep listening to the universe down. Really though the work ethic, I think my time in the military, it's been really interesting cause I , I learned a ton and, and it's really, it's paying dividends to me because I'm, I find myself reflecting on it pretty, pretty frequently and pulling from those experiences still to this day. So there was a lot that I learned. Then a big thing is the discipline and the work ethic and um, I would say leadership. Did you, let me ask you a question. At the time you learning this discipline and people think about discipline as is , you know, coersion or you know , authoritativeness and it's , it's really about self control isn't, it isn't about having a , uh, a regimen to your life of, of, of high value habits that then did at the time you were learning them in the military. Did you think they were kind of stupid or did you value them then too ? Or do you value more now? I definitely value them more now. Okay. Um, it's, I didn't know what it would the benefit that it would have to the future. Right. I just knew that certain things I have to be at work at, you know, five, 5:00 AM 6:00 AM whatever time it was. Yeah. So regardless of what happens the night before, you're going to work and obviously make that decision, but you're still showing up, right? Like there's no excuse not to be there. Yeah. Very good. So that that discipline carried forward and now you , it become a habit in your life. You've seen the benefit. Right. And I've used this example before, but I think it's so, so true. All the things you had to do to shoot straight, right ? All the little micro acts that you had to, whether it's the way you think, the way you breathe, the way you prepare. You know, there's prepare a greet, explore, right . Present a wrap up and execute . Terrible, terrible metaphor right there. But it does apply. This is going to let you go with it. Wow. That's terrible. But no , I can see the value there. Right. I guess, you know, obviously this thing is, is that, you know , what's the value of hiring Yvette and, and, and taking a shot on event , you know ,

Speaker 4 33:58

um ,

Speaker 1 33:59

honorably discharged guy like yourself, good experience. You know, probably bring some qualities that just , you just don't learn other places. You know, I didn't learn what you learned going to college right out of high school. Trust me, I didn't have any.

Speaker 4 34:11

Okay .

Speaker 1 34:12

I'm not sure what I learned, but it wasn't the life lessons that you got. Right. And I, and I tell you , you've been here at fan is, you know, I talked to people that work closer to you than I do and they , they speak so well of your , um, professionalism and the way you volunteer and the way you communicate and the gratitude you have. And I don't know if that comes from your background and from the military, but it shows well here at Nexstar , you know, and I've watched you train too , you know, and you and I can see that discipline come through. You know, you're a focus guy. That's a great quality. Well thank you jack. I appreciate that. No, I mean it, I mean it , it's been great. What else? What else? Let me, let me turn the table a little bit here. Um, I was talking about you and what you carry forward and , and if you had to give some members or even nonmembers that might be listening, some advice about how to, how to prepare people to be successful coming to your class. So people that, that, that arrive in your class, what would you recommend happens right before or as a prerequisite and then right after they go to one of your training classes, what would you say would be advice you would give a manager or somebody of sending people away to training? What would you say? No for the, for the manager or anybody that's, that's sending somebody to training or looking to go to training? Um , I think it's really all about the mindset that you bring in. If you're really shut down , not, not open to it. Um, eventually, you know, we see we have, we spend three days together and, and everybody tends to open up and it's, it's a rare person that shuts down the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the other day , um, uh, well I won't name the company. I was there and they had somebody that, he has a 20 plus year plumber from New Jersey. He say no more, no more . He was, it was very obvious that he didn't, he didn't want to be there as mannerisms. And he came up to me after the videos on other day on the third day, and everybody was at lunch and he sat down next to me. He's like, that, I just want to say thank you. And I was like, tell me, tell me some more what? What's up? And, and he just said, you know, I came in really defensive, really didn't want to be here. And I really see what Nexstar is all about now I see what the process and , and why they're doing certain things and I'm just really happy to be here. And it was his mindset shift. And I think about, had he had that shift earlier, how much more would have , would you have gotten out of it? Yeah. And I think it's doing the pre-work, talking to the people that you're sending the training about.

Speaker 5 36:57

Cool.

Speaker 1 36:59

What do you want to get out of this? What can you get out of us ? Because it's, you know , there's very unknown for some people and they don't know what to expect. And now I can see that some people might come in thinking, you know, this guy's just trying to send me to training so he made more money on me. Yeah. Right. It's not necessarily about my benefit, his or her benefit. Right. So definitely thinking about the mindset and working on that and making sure that the people that show up are , are open so that the first five minutes are as valuable as the last five minutes. Right. Yeah . But that's not always the case, but it's good advice. Right? Yeah . That is good advice. You know? What else, what else would you say? They leave the training. What would you recommend they do? They'll walk out the door. You're your , your job's done, you get on an airplane and you go back to your family in Fort Collins and these guys all go to theirs. They come into business the next Monday. What should a manager say do? Or if anything to them? Well, from the management side, I hope they would follow up and ask questions. You know , what did , what did you learn? What did, what did you take away from this? And, okay . And then how can I support you with with this? Cause they, they very much come out on a big high of, of this experience. Right. Hopefully everybody does. Yeah. And keeping them on that high is, you know, they , they show back up supporting where they're at and , and hopefully asking how can I support you? What, what can we do to , to keep this going? Cause they leave with various specific goals in mind. Right, right. There's curb sites to do, you know, all that stuff. Right. All the follow up . Cause what does it take that I've heard so many 2135 42 days to create a habit, whatever it is. Right. We've just done three days of it and then they go on a weekend and probably not a habit going on there. Right. And they show up Monday and we hope they start to , to use some of it . But there's so much content. It's hard right now it's, you know, it's very much a fire hose. I'm just blasting information. There's so much and the depth of it, I was telling somebody the other day, it was, is his second service system and he said he felt like he learned much more out of this one. Yeah . And I explained it as, you know, it's, have you ever skipped a rock across a pond only just kind of skimmed the surface and that's the first time through. And then the second time that you're able to take that rocket a little bit deeper. Got It. And you pull, even though it's a similar content, you're able to go a little bit deeper into it is um, you know, Dan and Julianne and, and everybody that built these yup . Built the books that put a lot of depth into it. They have question for you. This is maybe another way to ask the same question, but um, you could go back now to your prior job as a ride along coach, as a trainer. What would you do different on a ride along today after a training, knowing what you know now as a trainer , what'd you do? Anything different, you know, is there any different thoughts you've had? And this is after somebody come back from a trip . It could be maybe before sending them . Maybe just , just another way to think back on , I used to do your Japanese used to do that guy used to be that guy, right? Yeah . You were the guy that did all that. Right? You're the one who prep the guys who go to training. Then in some cases you did the training and then you're there to see him come back. Right now you've been in the class, you've seen a lot of different people, you know, turn the page. He had to go back and do it again. You do. What would you do better, different, more or less. Any, any, any learning. They're really asking more questions about them as is really what pops in my mind. I think making it more about them and and truly how can I support you? And so they feel that because you know, kind of the, you mentioned earlier if somebody might be resistant or hesitant because they don't want to go out to do a sales process, you know, I'm not here to make you more money, but right . If we show interest in them and then how can I support you ? What do you want to get out of this? And really make it about them. Just like, you know , we , we tell them, make the, their customer experience about the customer. Right. You know, as a right along coach my customer was that technician. And so make it all about them, make it truly about them and that will, so that, so the temptation for me would be to go, what did you learn? Show it to me. Right. Show me the greet, show me the, the explore , use the agenda card, let me see it. Right? And , and I'm jumping right past the person right into the thing. Yup . And you would say that, let's just make sure that we, that we make sure we've, we've sourced the y for the person, make sure we drawn that out. Yep . Right. So that, that now we can understand their motive, we can understand their mindset, we can really understand how to very fairly make it. So it's really benefiting them first. Right. Cause I would jump back and see myself. I would go right to the thing. Yup . Yeah. Looks guys go to this guy and yeah , and we're jumping right into close the sale. I mean we want to jump right in and right. We haven't even had the conversation yet. Yeah. And so I feel terrible about myself right now, but then I switch back to what I would do in the brown is all about sounds so good. And then I'll leave here. I won't even do it. I'll work on it though. I'll work up with that. Thank you so much man for all you're doing for this industry and for nextdoor and our members. It's a , it's great to have you doing this. Good work. No . Well thank you jack. I really, really grateful. I know , I know you are and I , I that that that comes through everyday here at next door . So I wanted to share your story. It's a very fascinating one. Your journey through the industry. It's a, I think your journey up through the military is probably not atypical . Right? And then what you've done since then is though, and that's fantastic. And again, thank you for your service for sure. Thank you for finding your way to next door . I'm so glad that Keith had a stake in that steakhouse at night and the jurors waiter and , uh, the changes that have happened as a result of that. Very exciting. Well , thank you. I appreciate it and thank you all for listening. Another special episode of Leadership Lounge. If you're out in the world and you see that David at an XR class, you've got to go. He's a great trainer and he's got great jokes and you got to go. I'm joking there. He's a great trainer. I've got to work on his jokes. So thank you all so very much. We'll catch you next time. See you later.